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Whether applied to a man or a woman (I am aware that it is mostly applied to women), using the word ‘shrill’ to characterise an opponent’s argument just reveals that the speaker is not familiar with any rules of logic and is riding purely on emotion. It’s equivalent to saying, ‘Your argument is argumentative.’ Anyone who considers themselves a good debater should consider themselves above such contentless rhetorical labelling. In my view, a woman accused of being ‘shrill’ would be better served by focusing on the weak logic of that as a counterpoint, rather than complaining about a double standard, which, while true, does not actually serve to advance the debate, and simply derails into another matter — an outcome that may serve your opponent’s goals and may, indeed, have been the outcome he/she (usually he) was after.

cf. Paul Graham’s essay, `How to Disagree’; wherein he provides a very introductory explanation of various `levels in the Disagreement Hierarchy’—because, as he says…:

Most intellectual dishonesty is unintentional. Someone arguing against the tone of something he disagrees with may believe he’s really saying something. Zooming out and seeing his current position on the disagreement hierarchy may inspire him to try moving up to counterargument or refutation.

And sometimes, People on the Left use the word “sexist” to limit debate.

Seems anti-intellectual, but Then, most Left wing positions are emotional rather than logical. Many of Obama’s arguments are straw men. Most of Pelosi’s are Ad Hominem.

Look at the debt ceiling debate. The only individual who can cause the USA to default on loan obligations is the head of Treasury (Geithner). He might do so at the direction of the President, but he can quite literally override the Presidents wishes in the short term, and get fired, but the loan obligations would have been paid.

In fact, there is more than enough revenue coming into Treasury to fund 1) Debt repayment 2) Social Security checks 3) Medicare checks 4) paychecks for military personnel, and every other Federal budget item can take a 70 percent across the board cut.

You could just disband the Energy department and the Education department, and defer all non-paycheck military spending for a year, and that would balance the budget.